State discovers non-existing schools, health centres on payroll

Adamawa Government has discovered some non-existent schools and healthcare centres in the state, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

A member of the state Committee for the Payment of Outstanding Salary Liabilities, Mr Bala Sanga, disclosed this on Wednesday at a meeting of the committee.

Sanga, who is the state Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice, said that field intelligence being conducted on local government payroll indicated some schools and health centres in local government areas were non existent.

“There are lots of schools and health centres that do not exist,” Sanga said.

Sanga who did not give the number of such non existent schools and health centre so far discovered and ghost workers involved in the on-going exercise, said there were a lot of abnormalities regarding salaries that needed to be addressed for the state to sanitise the system and save money.

“Just for schools, we have about 500 names that should not be on payroll.”

Sanga also explained that 2,180 names inserted in the payrolls were also discovered in January payroll for local governments. The Auditor General of Local Government, Alhaji Usman Maiha, lamented that there were cases of dead workers still existing on the payroll.

“In one local government, I have report of 18 dead people in payroll and there are cases of people collecting double salaries,” Maiha said.

The Chairman of the committee for the payment of outstanding salary liabilities, Alhaji Abdulrahman Abba-Jimeta, said that the committee had so far received N4.8 billion out of which it had utilised N4.7 billion in settling some arrears owed local government workers, teachers, primary healthcare workers and political office holders.

The committee is responsible for settling salary arrears from the N12. 6 billion Paris Club refund being expected by the state government.

Abba-Jimeta said that the government also approved N32 million for arrears of Development Area Administrators while N1 billion was set aside as arrears of state and local government pensioners. The committee chairman also announced that the state government had resolved to use 50 per cent of N12. 6 billion of the refund for the state’s projects.

He explained that the Memorandum of Understanding between states and Federal Government regarding the refund was that 50 per cent would go for salary arrears and the remaining for projects.